The Week’s Music...

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 869, 29 March 1956, Page 21

The Week’s Music...

by

SEBASTIAN

MAKE ‘no apology for devoting the whole of this week’s column to a piece of witticism at the thought of which I still chuckle: namely, the BBC feature Emily Butter (YC link), which was a satire not so much on operaboth traditional and modern-as on our attitude towards it. Henry Reed was apparently responsible for it: and it was gratifying to find that the BBC could laugh at itself in such good spirit. All the stock devices of publicity were done and overdone: the interviews with Hilda Tablet, the’ mannish composer, and her effeminate librettist; the commentator groping for words on the first night; the foreign singers taking leading rolesone coloratura actually singing in Italian! Then there were the special

effects in the use of films, the heavy accent on the soloists’ avoirdupois, the plummy musical. critic with his illustrated talk, and the distressing misunderstanding with the Consolidated Instrumentalists’ Union. We were privileged to hear a good deal of the ten acts of the opera itself: Donald Swann has written some faintly Brittenish music for this jape, and has made use of most of the possible means ta banality without polytonality or even the advertised atonalism. ("It’s an English opera with an all-female cast, and English women are such diatonic types.’’) Neither have the more obvious references been omitted: W. S. Gilbert’s ears would burn to hear the recital of Emily’s multiple identifying marks, there is a small collaboration with Tchaikovski, and, of course, the heroine has to die of

a broken heart, sobbing a last aria in the | powder-room, "I shall never never see Mrs. Bottomley again." This proves too much for her. ; There is pure farce here and there: for instance, the scenes where, owing to Union cefections, the opera proceeds practically without accompaniment; the policewoman, who turns out to be a bass-baritone, with one line only, "Good morning all"; the "very English" trio which lapses into Italian and French from the outsét; and the utterly memor‘able liftmotif. As an opera it has its points, and its setting in a department store is perfectly credible after some of the less likely scenes of modernistic operas that we have heard, or at least heard of. It is, in fact, good humoured and often caustic banter which, without much strain, could be taken nearly seriously, It will remain topical as long as grand opera and the-BBC survive: and when it is broadcast again, I for one will be at home with my radio.